


Knights

by 35grams (caxxe)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/pseuds/35grams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They don't go away, do they?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eighty-nine

                 "Have they started yet?"

                Mike leans on Erwin's desk and blinks away the morning light.

                Erwin blows on his coffee. "Not yet."

                "But you're giving him busywork."

                "Better safe than-"

                "It might not happen at night. You know some of us h-"

                Erwin stills.  "It might not happen at all."

                Mike turns to look at him fully. "Thinking he's exempt won't do him any favors."

                "Mike-"

                "I'll watch him."

                Erwin rubs his hands. Mike eyes the multiplying paperwork beneath them.

                "Thank you."     

                Weeks pass without incident. The Survey Corps transitions seamlessly from recouping losses from one expedition to preparing in earnest for the next. Training courses needed repairing. Gear needed maintenance.

                One day, Levi hadn't had his morning tea. The absence of the curious smell was unusual, then as a second morning passed without it, jarring. At the third, Mike began shuffling his squad's duties for his to allow him to spare an eye for Levi. There was no sense in approaching him directly, nor in informing Erwin. The first would deny. The other would worry. Mike didn't care to see what new ways sleep deprivation might mar his friend's face, so he kept his observations to himself.

                Levi was getting sloppy. Imperceptively so, unless someone happened to be paying attention. Where gear would be polished until it was routinely mistaken for a fresh factory shipment, the barest traces of grime began clinging to undersides and indentations in the metal. His responses to recruits' questions were duller, and his eyes clouded.

                After dinner, Mike signals to Levi to grab his gear and head to the 3DMG range. Platforms, poles and ropes snake through the course in every imaginable design, scratched and scuffed by years of abuse from blades and anchors and boots. Mike approaches it with Levi lagging behind.

                "Levi," he says, "Repeat 3DMG configurations CB, followed by AB and DAC. Continue until I signal to stop." Levi scoffs and mumbles something.

                "Mm?"

                "Forgot I gotta send advance notice up there in case I open my mouth." Levi bites at his lip and sizes up a nearby platform. "I said the other blonde tower's been tiring me out plenty." He shifts uneasily. "You don't need to do this."  

                "His method isn't fast enough for some soldiers."

                Levi stares. "There are others," he mutters, more to himself than to Mike.

                Mike nods. "There are others."

                "I didn't think squad leaders were in the business of tucking in soldiers and kissing them goodnight."

                Mike gestures to the course.

                Levi shrugs in a show of indifference that doesn't quite reach his eyes, prepares to jump, then stops and looks back. "Blondie know about this?"

                "No."

                Levi shoots up and darts through the configurations once, twice, ten times. At thirteen, his upswing falls short. At twenty, his labored breathing becomes louder than the hiss of gas and snapping wires. At thirty, he stops at the tail end of a formation and perches on a narrow platform to catch his breath. He dives again as Mike moves closer and unsheathes his own gear.

                Thirty-six.

                As Levi transitions into the next formation, his body twists in midair as if attempting to land a kick on something only he could see. Mike shoots up, tears Levi's gear from his hands and disconnects them from the gas chambers.

                Levi slips away as they touch ground and kneels on all fours, eyes frantic and unseeing, chest heaving and hair plastered to his face. Mike kneels next to him.

                "What do you see?"

                Levi shakes his head. He grips Mike's arm in a bruising vice.

                "What do you see?" He repeats softly.

                "Teeth. Teeth-" His voice fails him. Mike hands him a flask and watches Levi drain it in one go. He watches his chest rise and fall and feels for the hundredth time like he's looking in a mirror. "Teeth and-" he starts, "Blood. It's on my hands. Under my nails," he says, trembling visibly, "In my mouth, I-the teeth-"

                "Behind the teeth?"

                "I don't-"

                "Behind the teeth, Levi."

                Levi's face is drawn taut with tension. Then it softens a fraction.

                Birds. Sky. A grandfather. A home. Everyone sees something distinct. Something all their own. A promise. A dream. A reminder.

                Levi turns to him. He sits on his knees as his breathing levels. The lines on his brow are nearly gone. "They don't go away, do they?"

                "No. But we live with them. We look past the teeth."

                "Funny. Didn't see debilitating nightmares advertised on the recruitment posters."

                "Would you like that goodnight kiss?"

                An enthusiastic shove and several digs at Mike's height later, they return to the compound before the sky darkened. 

                Mike allows himself into Erwin's office, swipes half the forms from under Erwin's nose and goes to town filling out duplicates and correcting administrative mistakes without a word.

                Erwin leans back and crosses his arms.

                "How are the dreams?"

                "Won't be a problem. He'll know what to do if they show up again."

                "I meant yours."

                Mike stops writing. "We'll need more coffee to get through this mess," he mutters, and makes for the door.

                "Mike."

                His hand hovers over the doorknob. He doesn't turn, knowing his face would be answer enough. He forgets that Erwin didn't need even that.

                "Come," says Erwin. He pushes his maps away and grabs his gear.  "While there's enough light."

                They return to the 3DMG range. Mike stretches as heads roll into glutinous maws to his left, as spines splinter somewhere on his right. The wavering specters drift through him, then Erwin. He gives Mike an easy smile and a nod. The wires whistle through the fading light.

                Eighty-nine.


	2. Whistle

 

                Mike doesn't greet him with more than a nod the morning after. Good. It's open and shut. It never happened.

                Levi sinks the early morning into the 3DMG range. He flies farther. He swings faster.

                Two precious days stand between them and their first expedition under Erwin Smith. It was so only in name - Erwin was as much the Corps' head as its soldiers were its arms and legs well before Shadis abdicated his position. Still, the pageantry of it was sickening. Levi had never seen so many visiting noblemen, but he knew their eyes, eyes that glanced off the rigging and the horses and the carts like they were taking their seats and waiting for the tightrope act to begin.

                His mare whinnied and the eyes melted under the heat of the sun. When they stop to secure a camp, he picks shards of bleached bone from her hooves.

                The Commander is never still when the tents are pitched, the horses fed, and the walls so distant they can be blotted out with a finger to the horizon. The arms and legs of the Corps may idle but the head does not, cannot. He can't take watch on a high branch and look at the grass and the sky and imagine for a moment that freedom was as simple as climbing down.

                Levi watches the perimeter from above. The sun plays on the weave of his jacket through the leaves. It lights the threaded wings.

                Sound carries well through the high trees. Someone is whistling. Levi doesn't begrudge the other scouts their boredom. He listens to the low tune between the flutter of the falling leaves. He wonders if titans can whistle.

                His watch ends as the cold sets in. 

 

                Success. That's the word they use when a third of their men return in pieces. Levi stops learning the soldier's names.

                He cleans until the ringing stops and it takes longer this time so he cleans his gear and then the barracks and then the halls and he wonders if that shrill whine is sparing him the memory of the sounds of bursting flesh and splintering bone.

                He's sparring with another soldier on the grounds when he hears the whistle again. He almost doesn't recognize it. It's faster, higher. Happier, if a whistle could be  that. The soldier stumbles. Levi sweeps his legs out from under him and the soldier lands with a grunt. Levi frowns at his distractedness and offers a hand. He doesn't take it. He's frozen.

                Levi looks him over, but the soldier only presses a finger to his lips and then to the sky.

                He hears it. An answering whistle. It begins low and ripples through the wind and rises until the weight of it spills into his bones and he shouldn't know whose lips made that sound but the hairs at his nape stand and they know and his throat is dry and it knows. His eyes skirt up the walls of the officers' building and stop at the commander's open window.

                "Shoulda seen those two as recruits."

                Levi turns and the soldier gets up and stretches his arms across his chest.

                "Figured out titans don't hear a thing at certain pitches so it's all they did on watch duty. Whole ballads. Shadis forbid it so they found a pitch _he_ couldn't hear and, well."

                "Those two?" Levi asks, though he had an idea.

                "Zacharius and Smith," the soldier says distantly. "Just a handful of us left from that year."

                His left hook was weak, and his right, weaker, but he followed orders and he smiled freely. Flares burst and the second expedition under commander Erwin Smith veers to the right. Levi squeezes the blooming crimson from a winged patch and wonders if he can mourn without a name.

                The expedition clears an abandoned town of titans and sets up base in a mercifully intact inn. The patch is a leaden weight in his palm. Levi watches the swarm of soldiers reporting to the commander. There's no point in waiting. There are soldiers responsible for keeping tally. It shouldn't matter whose friend he was, whose memory. But now the patch is an anchor, and Levi's feet wouldn't move.

                "Levi."

                It's so soft that Levi almost mishears. He turns and Mike is there, frowning. His nose twitches, and Levi isn't reminded of a mutt anymore. He doesn't know when it happened, but he can almost read the twitches, the angle of his head. He smells blood.

                "I'm fine," Levi says without thinking.

                "Go to the med tent."

                " _I'm fine_."

                Mike opens his mouth, but he doesn't speak. He sniffs again and then squints like Erwin does when he realizes something and the patch is digging into the flesh of Levi's palm and he feels like a grave robber.

                Mike glances at his closed fist. Maybe he gets telepathy with that nose. A package deal.

                Levi gives him the patch and tells him he was an old classmate with a sloppy smile who liked to hear him sing. He doesn't have a name to give, but Mike doesn't need one. His face doesn't change, but his chest rises a little faster. It falls a little harder.

                 Mike tucks the patch into the hollow of his palm and leaves to report the loss.  

                Levi waits for the whistle. He waits from his perch until the sun touches the horizon and the evening chill settles in his bones. He waits until a distant titan wanders across a field and its shadow stretches for miles. It doesn't come.

                He glances at the still-bustling inn. There was no reason it should. It wouldn't get an answer.

                A cluster of ten-meters jostle some miles away from Levi's position. He rubs the stiffness from his arms. They're too distant to be a threat, but reason wilts at his singing nerves and it's too quiet and the ringing is coming back.

                Levi whistles into the swollen sun. Someone whistles back.

               

                               


End file.
